The fact that FB has blocked the pages of Betoota Advocate and The Chaser shows it doesn’t distinguish between real news and fake news, they are being punished because they are publishers.
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There would have been an algorithm or set criteria that implemented the ban. It’s not like they are viewing every page in Australia to say yes or no. Some sites would get caught up in that.
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Funny still seeing the ‘share on facebook’ links/buttons on news sites. I wonder how long until those are removed?
At least then Facebook won’t be able to track people as easily.
Not to defend Facebook here… but looking at what actually passed the House of Reps last night, I don’t think they’d legally have much other choice (besides payment, which they’re clearly not willing to do).
This is such a batshit broad definition, so it’s no wonder the likes of the BOM would be impacted if Facebook was to crack down on Australian publishers.
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10 News First Perth has so few viewers that Facebook has decided it is not a news source? 
It’s not blocked but the other 10 News First pages are blocked.
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They could if they wanted to, but Google would no longer have their market power in search if they did so.
Shows you how backward traditional media is. But this maybe for the best for independent podcasters like myself who haven’t been removed… we will ascend as the fake Murdoch news will collapse…
As a side note Foxtel has had its pages hit and stan and netflix/disney plus haven’t… so it is strategic
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As a side traffic to my pages this morning has sky-rocketed. How funny we must be high on fb search now
It’s not strategic at all.
It’s a scattergun approach.
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grants broadcasters Facebook pages have been hit as well
NSW health Facebook is working fine for me, plus RFS, Live Traffic, NSW Police Facebook pages. The local health district page is affected.
The main one I am actually sad about is Betoota.
… well here’s a survey of one … good riddance … there’s so much misinformation and outright disinformation posted every day by clueless clowns on those news organisations’ Facebook pages, their absence will be a blessed relief …
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It’s a mess right now but they will clean things up. At one point Facebook even banned their own page. Their target range was far too broad but then again so is the text of the law as posted above.
The media can suck it up but the Government pages - especially the BoM and other safety related pages - need to come back pretty quickly.
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The other nasty aspect to this new law is that new/small publishers (with <$150 000 revenue so far) are explicitly excluded.
So no support to new independent news media, just the LNP’s big mates.
Appear it might not be as scattergun as it looks
https://twitter.com/zoesam93/status/1362186758788587521?s=21
I can see why…
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The definition of core news content you’ve posted (edit: now removed) is from the ACCC draft. Bonkers that the government would remove any reference to “journalist” from that definition.
Yeah, I’ve updated it with the current definition
Saw you’d swapped it out while I was midway through posting. I need to slow down methinks 
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I have read that even FB pages of some small businesses and schools were affected.
This whole thing is very inconsistent by FB. They’ve taken out every single “major news website” but when it comes to smaller websites things get a bit strange. They’ve taken out some that probably shouldn’t be taken out then they take out others while leaving other pages that probably should be taken down.
Seriously what’s the point in banning useless pages like The Chaser and The Betoota Advocate?
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